I knew a guy who predicted that within our lifetime we would buy our pet food and supplies without going to a store. He's currently shouting at passing pedestrians while holding a sign asking for spare change.
This is good news for John McCain.
1: Egon Spengler said "print is dead" in Ghostbusters (1984). Hard to beat Egon Spengler on this one.
Anyhow the hundredths precision thing is just an artifact of excel's default number format C'MON OGGED.
Coming up: Dwight Meredith responds to Winds of Change on the Cruz Bustamante/AZTLAN controversy.
12: one of my friends is friends with Ar/med Lib/eral and it keeps throwing me when he shows up in her FB comments. Every time I want to yell at him about Iraq.
The blogroll is a little out of date, I don't see Skippy the Bush Kangaroo or Oliver Willis on there yet.
11: Not the Excel I use. Type in an integer, it displays an integer with no decimal places, at least by default - easy to make it otherwise, of course.
Who knew metrics could be meretricious?
The home team played sportsball.
That is so lame. I have come into contact with some of the display ads world and it seems incredibly unsophisticated, and I think this is a large part of the problem. I'm sure you are all fascinated by this, so let me explain.
There are two types of ads on the Internet: search results ads as you see on Google, and display ads. It is generally very easy to measure the effectiveness of search ads. When someone searches for "mountain bike" they have a high intention to buy, and you can measure if they click through (or better, actually purchase) something based on your ad. With a tight feedback loop a fairly sophisticated market has arisen. People optimise keywords, ad content, time of day, and so on.
Display ads are the equivalent of glossy ads in magazines (remember them?) It is hard to measure the effectiveness of them. Without a good feedback loop the market remains unsophisticated. Most display ads are still sold in the traditional manner (i.e. over steak dinners) and evaluated on bullshit metrics like number of viewers.
This gets to (part of) the problem for Time. Because advertisers evaluate their writers on bullshit metrics they too follow suit. A more sophisticated market would look at the type of reader each writer attracts, how engaged the reader is, and so on, and rate accordingly.
The other part of the problem is that Time's management is so unsophisticated that they aren't 1) challenging this premise and 2) making up their own bullshit metrics to judge writers.
5, etc.: You joke, but the blogging era was 50 times better than the current "Celebrity upskirts on HuffPost and Vox explains one weird trick" era. The progression of the Internet from 1995 to now is the best argument ever for the total extermination of the human race.
Display ads are the equivalent of glossy ads in magazines (remember them?)
Yeah, I think there used to be one called Time.
The progression of the Internet from 1995 to now is the best argument ever for the total extermination of the human race.
I dunno, what about Crossfit 4 Kidz? Also, ISIS and Ferguson.
We've been in living in apocalyptic times for many years now, but I continue to be surprised at just how much worse things can get.
Crossfit 4 Kids just means our current civilization has failed, like the Egyptians and the Romans before us. The Internet proves that the corvids deserve the planet more than we do. ISIS and Ferguson don't even rate.
Eh, I'm sure the corvids will fuck it all up just as much as we did.
Those corvids will have to fight off some strong, powerful children before we go down, though.
They'll just peck out their eyes, I'm sure.
Horses and elephants are stronger than humans. But who's riding who?
Since the dawn of time, man has asked the question: Who's zoomin' who?
Also, ISIS and Ferguson.
Ferguson is a double argument for extinction: the place in Missouri and Niall.
Isis and Ferguson are the names of my next two cats.
21
There's an article at The Atlantic that identifies the ad-based model of internet revenue as the internet's "original sin."
It says a lot of the same stuff and comes to the conclusion that better targeted ads (via more data-gathering) are a fairy tale that startups tell to venture capitalists and serve no other purpose, while at the same time enabling the panopticon.
That last isn't exactly surprising,
I find Google tracking creepy, and I find it shocking that a respectable news organization explicitly rates its journalists on advertiser-friendliness.
I am too clueless to be permitted to live.
Isis and Ferguson are the names of my next two cats.
Or, possibly, the title of Natilo's next mismatched-buddy-cop TV series.
In 2019, the gods return to earth - to find themselves unemployed. Naturally they turn to crime. The Metropolitan Police is close to overwhelmed by the threat of a new criminal group with supernatural powers. The Theological Support Unit is a last desperate throw of the dice - its boss, blues-loving Detective Inspector and former Glasgow University theologian Donald Ferguson, teams up with newly-recruited police constable and Egyptian mother goddess Isis to bring the gods into line...
...blues-loving, French kickboxing Detective Inspector and former Glasgow University theologian Donald Ferguson, teams up with newly-recruited police constable and Egyptian mother goddess Isis to bring the gods into line...
Starring Ttam and alameida. Would watch.
Who's zoomin' who?
Jesus fucking christ. Would you believe I actually had a post planned based on bringing this phrase back?
Note that SI employees are rated on "enthusiasm." In my experience, attitude-type ratings are designed to allow managers to downgrade people they don't like.
22: Actually, it reminds me of nothing so much as the decline of Usenet.
34: Zuckerman's source, this essay by Maciej Ceglowski, is worth reading in its own right.
21 - Most display ads are still sold in the traditional manner (i.e. over steak dinners) and evaluated on bullshit metrics like number of viewers.
Well, no. I mean, yes, they're still billed on CPM, but I can guarantee you that advertisers are monitoring things like engagement rates, click-through, etcetera. (These numbers are just very low! A 5% engagement rate would be terrific.) I think part of the thing is that almost universally display advertising rates across all media are too high at this point in time and I am terrified that eventually people will figure this out. Also, the presence of RTB advertising markets has made a real difference. Blah blah blah ginger, this shit is so much less interesting than Mad Men without Don Draper's mysterious past and a Joan to sexually harass after a three-martini lunch.
36: Yeah, I don't think I can improve on that.
I was thinking yesterday that, if someone is going to do the definitive Coffin Ed/Gravedigger Jones movie/series with Laurence Fishburne and Samuel L. Jackson, they'd better hurry up before those guys get too old.
Isis' talent for resurrecting people who have been killed (and dismembered!) would come in handy in forensics...
almost universally display advertising rates across all media are too high at this point in time
Too right. I won't pay for online ads and I only rarely do for print.